Mark Kupferman's Blog » Evaluation Criteria http://www.kupferman.com Kupferman.com is Mark Kupferman's home on the Internet featuring articles, reviews and comments on a variety of subjects. Sun, 19 Jun 2011 05:42:54 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Building Your Own Survey Panel – Online Panel Management and Strategies http://www.kupferman.com/online-panel-management-strategies-lemaster.htm http://www.kupferman.com/online-panel-management-strategies-lemaster.htm#comments Sat, 04 Aug 2007 18:18:40 +0000 Mark Kupferman http://www.kupferman.com/blog/?p=106 Continue reading →]]> Julie Lemaster, an MBA student at the University of California- Riverside, has written an interesting paper (which is posted to the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing web site) entitled "Online Panel Management and Strategies: An Introduction for Managers." It is an introductory guide to managers who have been asked or have decided it is time to start looking into online market research for their companies.

Lemaster contrasts full-service providers, such as M/A/R/C and SSI against complex and potentially expensive "self-serve" packages from Confirmit, Globalpark, GMI, and SurveyZ to low cost providers such as QuestionPro, Survey.com, SurveyMoney, and Zoomerang.

The abstract of the paper summarizes it as providing…

"…an introductory guide to managers who have been asked or have decided it is time to start looking into online market research for their company.  The size of the company you work for does not matter, as we will discuss several methods that can be used for any size company or investment level.  This paper is for managers who want to quickly learn the basic issues of online market research panels.  It will also be useful to managers who need to become familiar with some of the major providers of online panel management."

In addition to reviewing the providers and the various strategies for organizing your panel, Lemaster discusses a variety incentives that can be used to motivate and retain participants, such as lotteries, bonus points, and raffles.

]]> http://www.kupferman.com/online-panel-management-strategies-lemaster.htm/feed 0 How to choose a call center solution that provides good customer feedback data http://www.kupferman.com/call-center-software-stefania-viscusi-ten-considerations.htm http://www.kupferman.com/call-center-software-stefania-viscusi-ten-considerations.htm#comments Thu, 12 Oct 2006 02:51:42 +0000 Mark Kupferman http://www.kupferman.com/blog/?p=63 Continue reading →]]> Stefania Viscusi of TMCnet recently posted an article that offers ten top considerations for selecting call center software for your company. Although not completely on topic, it does have some research ramifications (one would hope that your call center is in some way integrated into the collection of customer satisfaction data, which is definitely marketing research related).

Read the full article at TMCnet.
Props to Jim Berkowitz for finding this article first!

]]> http://www.kupferman.com/call-center-software-stefania-viscusi-ten-considerations.htm/feed 0 Effective Customer Service Requires Not Just Knowledge, But Insight http://www.kupferman.com/customer-service-survey-software-selection-tmcnet.htm http://www.kupferman.com/customer-service-survey-software-selection-tmcnet.htm#comments Mon, 25 Sep 2006 13:39:26 +0000 Mark Kupferman http://www.kupferman.com/blog/?p=46 Continue reading →]]> In a recent article posted on TMCNet entitled "Effective Customer Service Requires not Just Knowledge, But Insight," Bruce Pollock identifies some of the criteria he uses when selecting a survey took specifically for use by customer service representatives and call center agents. He suggests that the tool you select should be "agent anonymous" (the customer service agents shouldn’t be able to influence the results); interactive (survey should be easy); time-efficient (the survey should be fast); it should offer both qualitative and quantitative results (scores are good, but comments can provide the most insight); and it should provide real-time access to results.

Read the full article at TMCNet.

Article found at CustomersAreAlways.

 

]]> http://www.kupferman.com/customer-service-survey-software-selection-tmcnet.htm/feed 0 Internet Survey Software Review Criteria http://www.kupferman.com/internet-survey-software-review-criteria.htm http://www.kupferman.com/internet-survey-software-review-criteria.htm#comments Mon, 04 Sep 2006 05:09:31 +0000 Mark Kupferman http://www.kupferman.com/blog/?p=26 Continue reading →]]> There are a lot of excellent internet web interviewing packages out there. Since it is unlikely that I will personally have time to review, compare and contrast every one of them, I’ve compiled some of the criteria I consider when evaluating internet survey software systems including questions I ask about basic capabilities, advanced survey related capabilities, design/development features, user experience related elements, response management capabilities, reporting capabilities, pricing, system requirements and available support and training. This list of questions is still growing and I will add to it as appropriate.

Basic Capabilities

  • Does it offer all of the basic question types?
    • Single selection (choose one — radio button, drop-down listbox)
    • Multiple selection (choose many — check box, listbox)
    • "Other: Specify" box for choose one, choose many
    • Single checkbox (check if true)
    • Rank order
    • Multiple question tables
    • Scale matrix (rating questions)
    • Fill in the blank (text, number, date)
    • Essay questions
  • Does it offer any special/unique question types?
    • Ranking questions?
    • Clickable image questions
  • Does it offer response validation?
  • Does it offer integrated spell-check?

Advanced Survey Capabilities

  • Does it support branching?
  • Does it support dynamic branching? (same page hiding of responses)
  • Does it support piping to questions?
  • Does it support piping to responses?
  • Can you pre-populate data?
  • Is there a software development kit?
  • Does it allow you to include you own question-based help?
  • Does it allow you to randomize the order of questions in a matrix?
  • Does it allow you to randomize the order of answers?

Design/Development

  • How easy is it to create a survey?
  • How long does it take?
  • Can you import surveys from other sources like text files or word documents?
  • Can you save and reuse design templates?
  • To what degree can you include images?
  • Will it allow multiple questions per page?
  • Will it allow multiple pages?
  • Can you change the font face, font size, color etc of questions & answers?
  • Does the designer control how questions are broken up from page to page?
  • Does it come with pre-written survey templates for specific situations?
  • Does it come with pre-designed survey shells/styles?
  • Does it offer a test/debug mode for surveys?

Advanced Design/Development

  • Can you embed audio, video and Flash?
  • Will it maintain a question library?
  • Will it maintain a scale library?

User Experience (Look and Feel)

  • Can respondents save or print their responses?
  • Can users go back to earlier responses?
  • Is there a progress indicator?
  • Can surveys be saved and finished later?

Response Management

  • Can you limit the start/date periods of the survey?
  • Can you limit the total number of responses for each survey?
  • Can you change/republish surveys?
  • Will it send out e-mail invitations? HTML and/or text?
  • How are respondents added to the system?
  • Does it offer mail-merge functionality?
  • Will it let you re-send out invitation to people who haven’t answered yet?
  • What kind of respondent authentication is there?
  • Can you edit/delete individual responses?
  • Can you edit/delete multiple responses by criteria?
  • Can the system ensure each respondent only answers once?
  • Will the survey save (and report) on partial responses?

Reporting Capabilities

  • Does it offer web/based reporting and analysis?
  • Will it generate cross-tabs?
  • Will it generate charts and graphs?
  • To what degree can the reports be customized?
  • Can you publish reports directly to the web?
  • Will it re-publish report results at scheduled intervals?
  • Can you filter the built-in reports by criteria of your choosing?
  • Can you filter the reports by collection date range?
  • Can you access the data directly from Microsoft Excel?
  • In what formats can you export the data?

Account Management

  • Can multiple users share the system/account?
  • Can individuals have their own accounts? Is it possible to share data?
  • Is it possible to require surveys to be approved before they are deployed?
  • Can the survey management interface be re-branded?

Pricing/Cost

  • How much does it cost (100 responses, 50,000 responses)?
  • What add-ons are available?
  • What is the annual maintenance cost?
  • What does training cost?
  • What kind of payment do they accept? Purchase orders?

System Requirements/Security

  • What kind of hardware is needed for the software to run effectively?
  • What operating system does the program run on?
  • How much bandwidth is required?
  • How many respondents can take the survey simultaneously?
  • Are survey session encrypted (SSL)?
  • Is collected survey data encrypted?
  • How often is the data backed up?

Support/Help/Training

  • What kind of support is available?
  • Does it offer some kind of tutorial or learning center?
  • Will they develop the surveys for you?
  • What kind of training do they provide?
  • What kind of custom development options are available?

Vendor Selection

  • Where is the company based?
  • How long have they been in business?
  • Who are some of their other clients?
  • Is there a demo of the software available?
  • Do they have active samples you can look at?
  • Will they do a live demo?
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